And it's true that, feminism aside, Brittain's writing is deeply accessible. Edward showed very few true academic talents. “Testament of Youth was written by Vera Brittain, a woman approaching 40 who had spent some 17 years coming to terms with her singular experience of the first world war – as a girl, a fiancee, a feminist, a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse and, finally, as the sorrowing victim of intolerable grief. In Testament of Youth, the words seemed to pour out of her, a potent mixture of rage and loss, underpinned by lively intelligence and fervent pacifist beliefs. The film was directed by James Kent and written by Juliette Towhidi. This paper takes an in-depth look at the life of feminist Vera Brittain through analyzing her autobiography, Testament of Youth. Feb 10, 2012 - Vera Brittain - WWI nurse, sister, fiance, memoirist (Testament of Youth) The film weaves in her personal letters to her fiance, a soldier at the front. She set out to tell the story of those left behind. Her radiant happiness got across to my mother.". I shall never be afraid to confront the real. And I've read about in school, and I've seen documentaries and films. And, you know, she spoke before thinking, and she was quite pigheaded. There was almost nothing else available that conveyed the personal devastation of the first world war from a young woman's point of view with such candour. Testament of Youth Summary and Study Guide. She realised she'd never get any more than that from me. And I was like, I don't know what my own accent is 'cause I wasn't born with this language, and because of the work I do, I kind of have to change all the time. It had wider implications too. War films are usually about men. Shirley Williams, who was born in Chelsea in 1930, three years before Testament of Youth was published, recalls her mother sticking to a punishing writing routine: sitting down at her typewriter at 10am, having already dealt with her correspondence and bills; at 2pm taking a break when she would lead the children around Battersea Park and recite the Latin names of the birds and flowers; then back to her desk until dinner time. VIKANDER: I remember when I read the book, I mean, I knew the facts of the war. Nicholas Eden-Green, whose mother Winifred was Brittain's secretary for more than 20 years, recalls that by the mid-1950s: "I got the feeling that Vera Brittain had grown a bit, not sour exactly, but saddened by the fact that she wasn't the popular figure she once was. I would say: 'Out.' The story takes place in 1914, right before the beginning of the first World War. Over the next six years, Testament of Youth sold 120,000 copies. ", For the author and feminist Natasha Walter, it is Brittain's ability to weave the political into the personal that makes her memoir so riveting. Vera Brittain’s 1933 memoirs, Testament of Youth, focus mainly on the years 1914-1925. Her fiance, Roland Leighton, had been killed on the western front the previous Christmas. It is the kind of small incident that anyone can understand – and yet it elucidates something much more profound. It's based on a famous antiwar memoir published in 1933. Even now, Baroness Williams receives letters from people who have read Testament of Youth and who want to share with her how much it meant to them. In Testament of Youth she writes that, in the weeks after his death, a series of disconnected pictures rolled through her mind: "A solitary cup of coffee stands before me on a hotel breakfast-table. Williams breaks off. The literary editor and author Diana Athill wrote in a 2009 article for the Guardian that Brittain "was brave, and her strong feelings would always express themselves in action. Copyright © 2015 NPR. "He once said to me: 'It's easier to deal with a lover than a ghost,' because with a living person, sooner or later, the flaws will show up. Of culture, sport, art and life imitating it. English Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse, writer, feminist, socialist, and pacifist. I think you feel the same when you see these people dying in Iraq. She never gave up on that at all. It got better as she began to realise I was going to survive.". Her beloved brother, Edward, had been seriously injured in the battle of the Somme. As a woman, Brittain was arguably the first to blend emotional resonance with intellectual clarity. You don't have to be at all interested in feminism or pacifism to get it.". And I wanted to kind of bring that. But in many ways, it was simply that Holtby was able to provide the supportive companionship Brittain had once so valued in her beloved elder brother, Edward. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. A dramatization of Vera Brittain’s 1933 autobiography Testament of Youth—a memorial to a generation devastated by WWI— chronicles her experiences as a nurse in … The imagined holds far greater terror for me. He was killed at the age of 20 by a German sniper while repairing barbed wire on a moonlit night in a stretch of no man's land. By wars end she had lost virtually everyone she loved. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. I think that's an outrage, myself. "Tough," Williams admits. The film opens in the U.S. this weekend. Vera Brittain's "Testament of Youth", an autobiographical memoir of her service as a nurse in the First World War, was controversial when it first appeared in 1933, largely because it was written from a pacifist viewpoint and rejected the official British position that we had been fighting a … I say no more of it. When Brittain's fiance was killed just before Christmas 1915, she had been expecting him home on leave. Feminism: Throughout her early life, Vera was ultimately told that she was inadequate because she was a woman. Occasionally Winifred [Holtby, a lifelong friend and collaborator, and the author of South Riding] could make her laugh, but Winifred was a radiant personality and someone who could enjoy life a lot of the time. Even now, eight decades after its publication, it continues to inspire a new generation. Eighty years on, it remains one of the most moving books ever written about the damage of war and its continuing personal cost. Then the war broke out, and suddenly, she actually gave up, in one way, her biggest dreams because she felt like she, like all the men and all the other - most of young people at that time in England, you know, she wanted to actually do something. When it was finally published in August 1933, the book was an instant hit. It was only when she decided to write as herself that her authorial voice seemed to flow and the events she had endured were given a poignant immediacy to which readers could relate. In fact, it later emerged that she was listed in the notorious Nazi "black book", which detailed notable people to be arrested in the event of a successful invasion of Britain by Hitler. "It moves and it educates.". Testament of Youth, often hailed as the story of a lost generation, is the autobiographical account of one young woman's life during WWI. VIKANDER: And suddenly, I realized if you just - if you do your best and try to get the language right in English, you suddenly have a chance to do work in so many other countries and on such a bigger scale. She wanted to be a writer. The film stars Alicia Vikander as Vera Brittain, an independent young woman who abandoned her studies at Somerville College, Oxford, to become a war nurse. When she died, in 1970, she believed, according to Bostridge, "that her reputation was at the lowest ebb it had ever been. The writing of Testament of Youth – and its success on publication – did not just affect Brittain herself. And I was like, why don't you do your own accent? For one thing, her husband had to cope with reading his wife's impassioned reminiscence of her former love. It's a fitting word for a woman who survived, and whose life's work was dedicated to honouring the memory of those who, tragically, did not. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. She was 76. Vera Brittain lost her fiance, brother and two closest male friends in the first world war. Vera Brittain while serving as a V.A.D. Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1893– 1970) has endured as this British author’s best known work. CORNISH: Alicia Vikander says her performance required a physical transformation. One of her two closest male friends, Geoffrey Thurlow, had been wounded at Ypres. First she made several attempts at fictionalising her wartime experiences without much success. The new film "Testament Of Youth" takes a different view. Testament in this context is about the growing awareness of war from the perspective of a young woman. See more ideas about first world, wwi, world war i. In 1970, Brittain died after a long physical decline precipitated by a fall on a London street while on her way to a speaking engagement. DOMINIC WEST: (As Mr. Brittain) Oh, here we go. Leighton emerges from the pages of Testament of Youth as a glamorous, heroic figure, an idealistic public schoolboy who was captain of the Officers' Training Corps at Uppingham School before signing up at the outbreak of war. Vera Mary Brittain (29 December 1893 – 29 March 1970) was an English Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse, writer, feminist, socialist and pacifist. Brittain's father, unable to recover from his son's death, committed suicide by jumping into the Thames in 1935. And she was honest… as blazingly honest as anyone can be". A film adaptation co-produced by BBC Films and starring Saoirse Ronan, who won an Oscar nomination for her role in Atonement, is in development, and the book seems to strike a chord with contemporary readers who have themselves lived through an era of renewed conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. She has to change from an idealistic student to a grieving young woman and a public figure. Many contemporaneous accounts portrayed women as victims who endured the shattering impact of world events, rather than as agents of their own change. Brittain never got over his loss. "If the war spares me," Brittain wrote to her brother in a letter that year, "it will be my one aim to immortalise in a book the story of us four.". Vera Mary Brittain (29 December 1893 – 29 March 1970) was an English Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse, writer, feminist, socialist, and pacifist. She was saying: 'This is awful.' Although Brittain is no longer alive to witness it, her book has shaped the consciousness of modern-day feminists. CORNISH: The role of Vera Brittain in "Testament Of Youth" is Alicia Vikander's biggest international role to date. The other, Victor Richardson, was fighting in the trenches in France. Her fiancée Roland Leighton, two close friends, and her brother Edward Brittain were all killed in the war. I wonder if, at some level, the capacity for finding things funny had been battered out of her? Commenting has been disabled at this time but you can still. Although Brittain never believed she would find happiness in a relationship after Roland's death, she did eventually marry the philosopher and political scientist George Catlin in 1925 after a courtship initiated by letter. Watch. This book is great and painful, a memoir by Vera Brittain, the English writer, mostly a wartime memoir based on her experiences during the First World War Britain was an Oxford student when World War I began, volunteered as a nurse and was a witness on the vicious war and its victims, lost two of her loved ones her brother and fiance The war proved a traumatic experience. The Testament of Youth Community Note includes chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quizzes written by community members like you. reprinted] ; with a preface by Shirley Williams. ALICIA VIKANDER: (As Vera Brittain) Please don't keep things back from me, Roland, with an idea of sparing my feelings. nurse. When it was later published in America, the New York Times reviewer wrote that Brittain's autobiographical account was "honest… revealing… heartbreakingly beautiful". Roland, Edward, Victor and Geoffrey "were as familiar to me as my brother and living friends", she says. It has often been assumed that Holtby and Brittain were lesbians because of their unconventional living arrangement. The other, Victor Richardson, was fighting in the trenches in France. VIKANDER: She fought to get into Oxford, and she wanted to study English. "After the war, she couldn't really think of humour for a long, long time. That really made me feel the bigger picture. "Testament of Youth" is both a record of what she lived through and an elegy for a vanished generation. Nursing before the death of her fiancé, Roland Leighton, was an effort for Brittain to contribute to the war in order to be closer to Roland. Walter first read Testament of Youth at school but returned to it later in life when she was researching her 2010 work Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. Vera Brittain and her brother Edward, 1915. My mother would say: 'Where are you going?' Her best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth recounted her experiences during the First World War and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism. She documented her experiences as a nurse, in her autobiography “Testament of Youth”. It was written by a young woman named Vera Brittain who had served as a … Her best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth recounted her experiences during the First World War and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism. Brittain herself had been working as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse tending to wounded servicemen for more than a year. She wrote Testament of Youth as a cry of outrage and agony, so that the futility of their deaths would be remembered. "It should probably be in a museum somewhere. ", Williams remembers her mother being anxious and occasionally over-protective, constantly worried that something dreadful would happen to her loved ones as it had done in the past. 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